journalism

The renowned journalist explores how the authoritarianism and corruption she has been fighting for 35 years are now aided and abetted by the internet.

A new design, a new publishing schedule, and a deep commitment to a very old technology

Alec MacGillis’s history of the tech giant is long-form journalism at its best.

Michelle Duster situates her influential great-grandmother in the history of Black life in America.

Democracy is about membership in a local community. It can’t flourish without local journalism.

Delphine Minoui planned a weeklong visit to explore her heritage. She stayed for 10 years.

Bad for democracy, good for business

Reporting from Iraq or Afghanistan, Darfur or Haiti, can be alluring and exciting. But the minute some people put on that flak jacket, something happens.

“The government that is closest to the people governs best.” That sentiment was expressed recently by Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, and it’s long been a staple of conservative political philosophy and of candidates who want federal programs to be taken over by state and local governments. But liberals embrace it in their own way when they talk about “participatory democracy” and the need for people to be able to make decisions about the issues that directly affect them.

The question is: what does it mean for government to be “closer” to people?

As I've said before, the objectivity-fetishizing conventions of straight news reporting make me crazy. It's not just the odd philosophical throwback of implying that reporters can somehow avoid writing as particular people situated in particular contexts. It's also the convoluted copy, in which even plain facts can't be stated plainly if they happen to be unpopular.

So I was glad when NPR released its new ethics handbook, in which among other things the network states that it favors "truth" over "the appearance of balance" and adds that "if the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports."

Some of the best coverage of the firing of National Public Radio news analyst Juan Williams has been NPR's own. But the broader conversation has quickly become a chorus of ridiculousness.

We asked some expert observers of the religion scene how they are navigating the new media. What do they read, watch and listen to? How have their reading, listening and viewing habits changed over the past decade?Here's Mark Silk: "I’ve always been a news junkie. I still take two dead-tree newspapers—the New York Times and the Hartford Courant. I look at the Washington Post every morning, and I listen to NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered while driving to and from work. At work, I’m in thrall to the continuous news cycle. I check the AP wire on Yahoo as soon as I sit down at my desk, and then scan the general-interest blogs and blogzines—the Daily Dish, Politico, Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast."

For 23 days in December and January, Israel struck targets throughout the Gaza Strip while Hamas sent a barrage of unguided rockets and missiles to towns in southern Israel. In the end, 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were dead, with 4,000 Palestinians and dozens of Israelis wounded. Media coverage was intense, but American and Arab media covered the war in significantly different ways.